Federal policy on crime just plain nasty, says retired senior public safety official

Mary Campbell, former director general of the corrections and criminal justice directorate at Public Safety Canada, says the government's tough-on-crime agenda is based on empty slogans and failed policies.

Photograph by: Ben Nelms/for Postmedia News
, Postmedia News

VANCOUVER – A former high-ranking public servant in Ottawa is ripping into the Conservative government’s tough-on-crime policies, saying they reflect a “deep, visceral nastiness” and actually “do nothing to reduce or address crime.”

Mary Campbell retired in April as director general of the corrections and criminal justice directorate at Public Safety Canada. In her role, she says she met almost weekly with the public safety minister or senior staff, giving advice on public policy, programs and research.

Twenty years ago, Canada was regarded as a “world leader” in the corrections field. Today, it has reached its “lowest point,” Campbell told Postmedia News in Vancouver, where she addressed a criminal justice conference Thursday.

“The current government has an approach that they like to call tough on crime. I say that’s the last thing it is. In fact it’s quite soft on crime because it’s really a lot of slogans and failed policies that do nothing to address crime or victimization.”

Some of the rhetoric, she said, was on display this summer when Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced new legislation for dealing with child-sex offenders.

“The fact is we don’t understand them and we don’t particularly care to. We understand only that they must be dealt with,” Harper said at the time.

Campbell said those remarks are “chilling when we think of them used with other groups of citizens today and in the past.”

“The deeply embedded nastiness of the current governing party is constantly displayed in their actions, whether it be creating even more punitive carceral conditions, erecting barriers to reintegration, never letting the offender be more than the worst thing they have ever done, using victims for political ends – the list is truly endless,” she wrote in her conference speaking notes.

Jean-Christophe de Le Rue, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, said in an email Thursday that the government “unapologetically puts the needs of victims ahead of convicted criminals” and that “we will continue to do so above the objections of prisoner rights advocates.”

“Canada has a modern and humane correctional system,” he added.

Campbell, a public servant for almost 30 years, stressed she’s “not all about blaming the politicians.” In her speech and interview, she implored senior administrators in the criminal justice field to push for more “progressive” policies and evidence-based programs. Many changes do not require legislative changes, she said.

They could start, for instance, by focusing resources on dealing with high-risk offenders.

“We waste a lot of taxpayers’ hard–earned money on low-risk offenders. We know from the research that we shouldn’t do anything with them … Stop sending them automatically into halfway houses on day parole.”

Money instead could go, for instance, towards women offenders with severe mental illness, placing them in hospital treatment centres where they can get intensive psychiatric care, she said.

“So far that has not materialized and I think it’s frustrating to see the slow pace. You start to wonder what more is it going to take to get some of these agreements going? … The suffering and the harm that’s done is really shocking for a country like Canada.”

Off-site treatment was one of the recommendations in a report released this week by Canada’s prison watchdog, Howard Sapers, documenting the growing number of cases of chronic self-injury among women inmates.

Public safety memos obtained under access-to-information legislation show that the correctional service has been considering a pilot project with regional mental health facilities to address “acute” mental health needs of women inmates.

The memos point out, however, that providing them with in-patient psychiatric services will be more expensive than providing mental health services within the prison system.

Veronique Rioux, a spokeswoman for the Correctional Service of Canada, said this week that those partnerships are still being explored and community health experts are reviewing possible treatment plans.

Campbell also said there is an urgent need for more real-world job training for inmates that will make them marketable when they leave prison.

What exists now are “ad hoc, hit-and-miss contracts for low-grade work, nothing that’s training for a substantial job,” she said.

“Do the labour market analysis so we know where the gaps are and start matching up offenders to that training.”

She said it was “egregious” that women inmates at Joliette Institution in Quebec, for instance, were sewing underwear for male inmates.

“There is a garment industry in Quebec. But I see no evidence that men’s underwear is part of it,” she said. “C’mon, it’s a waste of time.”

Corrections officials said earlier this summer that they have developed a multi-year strategy to “align vocational training with current labour market data” and continue to look for opportunities to expand apprenticeships.

Campbell said there’s an international principle that people go to prison as punishment, but the Harper government has taken the view that people should go to prison for punishment.

That’s been reflected, she said, in the stripping away of privileges, such as access to weightlifting equipment, and reducing how much money inmates can earn. She said she’s even heard suggestions to feed the inmates less.

“It reflects a basic attitude of there’s us and there’s them – they are the worst thing they’ve ever done and that’s all they’ll ever be,” she said.

This negativity, she said, has filtered down to front-line public safety staff. For instance, parole hearings and parole decisions have increasingly become “cutting and cruel,” she said.

Campbell said there’s far too much fixation during parole hearings on grilling offenders on irrelevant matters and assessing offenders’ “moral worthiness” – are they sorry enough? – when it should be about, “Is this the right time and the right conditions to start re-integrating you?”

A spokesman said Thursday the Parole Board of Canada had “no comment to offer.”

Campbell said that in many respects, the U.S. has moved ahead of Canada. Americans are focusing resources on higher-risk offenders, conditions for parole are being reduced and special release measures are being introduced for elderly and sick prisoners. A few years ago, U.S. federal prisons also allowed some inmates access to email messaging.

Advocates say email makes it easier for inmates to maintain ties with family and conduct their legal affairs, and for authorities to monitor communications. It also reduces opportunities to smuggle drugs or contraband via regular mail.

Asked if Canada was contemplating such an idea, a corrections spokeswoman said the government “does not have such a plan.”

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Mary Campbell, former director general of the corrections and criminal justice directorate at Public Safety Canada, says the government's tough-on-crime agenda is based on empty slogans and failed policies.

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